Saturday Supercade (1983-1985 Ruby Spears)
Saturday Supercade is an hour long cartoon series that premiered on CBS on September 17, 1983. It is a compilation show of various cartoon shorts based off popular video games at the time. Because of all the various copyright issues involving each of the video games this show is based off of, the show has not reaired since CBS last aired it on August 24, 1985, with the exception of the Space Ace shorts which aired on Cartoon Network and Boomerang on various occasions. The rest of the show became lost, and for a while, very little of the show became available on the internet. Many tape trading sites have been trading and selling two full episodes, and were the only two episodes fans had access to before we started seeing more of the show posted on the internet. One of the tapes were a full CBS Saturday Morning block from April 1984, and was uploaded on Myspleen and other torrent sites around 2005. The Saturday Supercade episode included Spaced-Out Frogs (Frogger), Gorilla My Dreams (Donkey Kong), Crazy Camp Creature (Q-bert), and The Teddy Bear Scare (Donkey Kong Jr.). It was, for a while, the only full episode of Saturday Supercade to be posted on the internet. Some viewers had access to the second tape. Unlike the first tape, this one doesn't contain the original commercials. It wasn't posted on the internet until much later. The cartoon episodes included were Hyrdofoil & Seek (Frogger), Mississippi Madness (Donkey Kong), Masked Menace Mess (Pitfall), and Sheep Rustle Hustle (Donkey Kong Jr). The ending of the Dkjr episode was cut off as the tape transitioned into the Pac-man cartoon. Also, the included Pitfall episode is still, to this day, the only Pitfall episode available. Eventually, at sometime around 2008 or so, an Ebay seller was selling 16mm film copies that contained episodes of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. The film copies were purchased by a cartoon collector, and the films were transferred to a bootleg DVD, of which, it was being sold on sites like iOffer. It is unknown where the main source of the films came from, but it featured a different set of credits that wasn't shown during it's CBS run, and were distributed by MCA TV... possibly an attempt at trying to show the cartoons in syndication. These films also remedied the missing ending to Sheep Rustle Hustle. The DK and Dkjr episodes were later posted on Youtube. Around 2008, Crackle posted some Minisodes of most of the Q-bert episodes. This implies that Sony owns the rights to the Q-bert segments, which would make sense as Gottlieb, the developers of Q-bert, is owned by Sony. They were shortened versions of the Q-bert cartoons, and not the full episodes. There's still very little of the full versions on Youtube. Youtube did eventually start to get a little bit more of the show. Unfortunately, some users, such as mlsgrant, were uploading incomplete episodes leading the rest of the episode unavailable. The advent of Youtube, did however, lead to Season 2 intros being posted for the first time. Clips from Kangaroo were posted, but we only got two incomplete episodes. There is still not a single full Kangaroo episode posted to this day. Even though there are some users that are holding full episodes in their archive, we're not likely going to see too much of the full show until we see it become commercially available. In 2010, Warner Archive announced that they might release Saturday Supercade on DVD, but nothing has come out of it since. Most likely, because of all the copyright issues with the individual video game characters. Not to mention Sony seems to own the rights to the Q-bert segments going by the Minisodes. UPDATE 6/14/2015: Myspleen user, TonyLoccsta uploaded a CBS broadcast torrent from January 19, 1985 which contains a full Saturday Supercade episode. The Kangaroo episode contained in that broadcast (The Tail of the Cowardly Lion) has been resurfaced for the first time. 10/3/2015: A bit of a late update, but a few weeks ago, Youtube user, NintendoWizard22 uploaded the full version of the Q-Bert episode, Dog Day Dilemma. Also, another user on the Wikia page apparently has a copy of the Donkey Kong Jr. short, Trucknapper Caper. 10/23/2015: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announced a DVD release of Q-bert. It is an Amazon Createspace MOD release that will contain 17 out of the 19 episodes. The DVD is scheduled to be released on November 3rd. More information will be updated when the DVD comes out. Episodes Frogger Donkey Kong A decent amount of episodes are made available thanks to some 16mm film prints containing episodes of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. These episodes were sold on a bootleg DVD shortly afterwards. Q-bert In 2008, Sony posted Minisodes of Q-bert online. Minisodes are shorten 5 minute versions of each episode. Unfortunately, Sony never uploaded or release any of the full versions of the Q-bert episodes. Because of this, most of the Minisodes are the only versions of the episodes available. Very little of the full episodes have surfaced online. A few incomplete complete copies of the full versions were actually uploaded online. Minisode/Incomplete indicates that both the Minisode version and an incomplete copy of the full episode has surfaced. Donkey Kong Jr. This is perhaps the most complete Saturday Supercade segment available thanks to the 16mm Donkey Kong prints. A few episodes are found in their Spanish dub only. Pitfall Next to Kangaroo, this is the rarest of all the Saturday Supercade segments due to its very short run. Space Ace This is the only Saturday Supercade segment to have all it's episodes fully available. This is thanks to Boomerang showing reruns on occasion. Kangaroo Kangaroo is up there as another one of the rarest Saturday Supercade segments out there. Although a few incomplete episodes were uploaded online, only one full episode has surfaced as of June 2015. Category:Lost TV Category:Lost Animation Category:Partially Found Media